"Doctor Firnivale. Professor Marrpole. Doctor Hutk. And Williams."
The men we had just released nodded in turn.
"You, Dr. Firnivale," John said. "Did you give the advanced geo-physics
lectures?"
"Through that crook's hearing aid," said the tattered man on the cellar
floor. "Yes, I did. I could hear the questions and I told him the
answers. So did all these others here."
"Professor Marrpole, I recognized you from a stereo-record you made on
magnetic differentiation on small planets. Is that how David Adam Smith
became the world authority when you disappeared?"
"Yes," the man with the shaggy beard confirmed. "He caught me by asking
me to stand on a plate for a live recording."
* * * * *
John turned to me.
"We have here, Morry, a careful collection of the leading specialists
in the world. These people are the reason for David Adam Smith being
able to outthink any fifty men. These are the fifty men he built his
reputation with!"
"I don't understand why you all helped him," I said.
"Because he used to oscillate the crystals we were in, young man."
"But now it's our turn!"
"By heaven, wait until I meet that treacherous snake...."
"I'm going to sue him for every credit he has!"
"Who would care to join me in pulling him into small pieces surgically?"
The babble in the cellar rose in volume and intensity. Under it all,
the bubble-dancer was whispering in my ear how grateful she was to
great big me, and how that foul old goat had kept her for amusement
just because she walked into his office to complain when he fired those
nice boys....
"He had to, I suppose," I said. "If you saw all these people in
crystals."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," John roared. "Please!"
There was silence.
"Thank you. Which of you in fact thought of the stellar-reporters for
accumulating data on other parts of the Galaxy?"
"I did," said a tall thin man by the door. "Higgins is my name."
Even I had heard of the astrophysicist inventor.
"Had it occurred to you that with these crystals and your
stellar-reporters man could expand through the Galaxy?"
"No. But now that you raise the point, of course we could!"
"My friend, Morris here, and I and some colleagues have been doing so
privately for some time...."
John waited until the excited murmuring died away.
"We thought David Adam Smith had discovered us. And that is really why
we broke into his office ... and found you all there. But I now think
he knows nothing about it. Subject to your agreement, I suggest we
should keep him in ignorance, lock him in a quartz crystal here and
continue the private migration without involving him."
"Why not bring him to justice?" asked Higgins.
"Because I doubt if the government would believe their eyes. You have
built David Adam Smith into a legend that would be difficult to break.
Also because they would certainly take the Institute from anyone else,
hold up the experiments and delay everything. And I have a lot of
friends out there in space trying to establish a planetary colony."
Marrpole laughed.
"Really," he said, "we have been providing all the brain power of this
Institute for so long, we may as well continue. Speaking for myself,
gentlemen, a few years free from any restraint whatever are exactly
what I now need. I am in favor."
There was a general mutter of agreement.
"Thank you," John said. "And now, if you will follow me, there are
excellent showers and a whole class of spare rooms."
"You stay with me," I said to the bubble-dancer.
I led her through the Institute to the classrooms where Director
David Adam Smith was still plotting the courses of the missing
stellar-reporters. They would be back soon, but he was never to know
that.
I took him from behind and held him off the floor by his elbows, then
twisted him round in the air so that he could see us both.
"Yes," I said. "She's out. And you're going in."
He started to scream so I clipped him.
Then I carried him out to his private labs. I made him unlock the
door and unset the alarms, dumped him on the maxima plate of his own
converter and shot him into a spare enlarged crystal he had on his
desk, after taking off his hearing aid. He didn't need it. It was only
an amplifier so that he could hear the advice of whoever was in there
at the time. I put him in and clipped the mike onto my shirt.
"What are you doing?" asked the bubble-dancer.
"Look," I said. "This fella could do it. And someone's got to take the
other lectures. And I'm never going to get to be a qualified professor
any other way."
"But I thought they said he didn't know anything?" the bubble-dancer
asked.
"He must remember some of it, or I'll oscillate him at a high
frequency."
Meanwhile, I thought I'd practice laughing, "hig, hig, hig." But the
former Director did not seem to find it funny.